The Grand Hotel Villa Cora was originally known to the Florentines as Villa Oppenheim, an elegant residence built at the end of the 1860s, during the period when Florence was the capital of Italy. The story goes that Baron Gustave Oppenheim built this sumptuous villa in honour of his young bride; over the years he and his consort organised numerous society events here, which were attended by the cream of the Florentine and international aristocracy.
Villa Cora was designed by Pietro Comparini and Giuseppe Poggi, who was the architect commissioned to carry out the redevelopment of Florence at the time when it was capital, including the construction of Piazzale Michelangelo and the Viale dei Colli.
The Oppenheim family was a German dynasty of Jewish origin and had been a leading player in the banking and finance sector on the European markets since at least the 18th century. In partnership with the Banca Fenzi, it funded the project for the construction of the Suez Canal in Egypt, which was opened in 1869.
Villa Cora was subsequently purchased by the widow of Napoleon III, the Empress Eugenié, and then in 1894 passed into the hands of Egidio Cora, from whom it took its present name. Egidio’s son, Giuliano Cora, was an ambassador of Florence in the world and became a personal friend of the Emperor of Ethiopia, Hailè Selassie. Guests at the villa in this period included great artists, emperors, princes and pashas, including the Japanese emperor, whom the imperial suite is named after, and Enver Pasha, who stayed in the villa at the turn of the nineteenth century.
The luxurious villa includes the Moorish Salon: with an Arabian-style dome and a chimney of black marble inlaid with semi-precious stones, the White Salon, with a fireplace sculpted in white Carrara marble bearing the coat of arms of Baron Oppenheim; The Ceramics Hall, with ceramics set into the wooden panelling
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